Luka Magnotta is shown in an artist’s sketch in a Montreal court on March 13, 2013. A judge has prevented Montreal police from getting their hands on a confidential academic video interview with accused killer Magnotta.

MONTREAL — A Quebec judge has refused to allow Montreal police to view a taped interview with accused killer Luka Magnotta about his work as an escort, saying the university researchers who conducted the sex worker study have a right to keep Magnotta's answers confidential.

Five years before he was charged with killing and dismembering Chinese student Lin Jun in 2012, Magnotta participated in a study by two University of Ottawa criminologists about sex workers.

Montreal police had sought to gain access to a copy of the interview for evidence against the 31-year-old Magnotta, who was a stripper and porn actor.

In denying the police request to access the interview, Quebec Superior Court Justice Sophie Bourque said that "much of the research involving vulnerable people can only be conducted if human participants are given a guarantee that their identities and the information that they share will remain confidential."

After consulting the interview, Bourque determined that nothing in "the interview" is relevant to assess Magnotta's state of mind at the time of the events in 2012.

After Lin was killed, some of his body parts were mailed across Canada.

The Canadian Association of University Teachers welcomed Bourque's decision.

"It upholds, for the first time, researchers' right to protect confidential information necessary for their academic work.

"Courts have recognized the social importance of journalists being able to protect confidential sources, and this decision extends similar recognition to academic researchers," James Turk, the association's executive director, said in a statement.

Montreal police sought a warrant to seize the audio recording and 68-page transcript of the interview after Adam McLeod, who interviewed Magnotta for the study Sex Work and Intimacy: Escorts and Their Clients, recognized his photo in a newspaper and notified Montreal police. McLeod, a research assistant, contacted police without the researchers' permission.

Turk noted that Bourque said that researcher-participant privilege is not absolute, "depending in each case on the balance between public interest in permitting important research with other interests such as facilitating the investigation of serious crimes."

Lawyers representing the University of Ottawa criminologists had argued the 2007 interview with a subject known under the pseudonym "Jimmy" should be kept confidential.

The lawyers said Magnotta participated in the study as part of a survey of sex workers under the condition his interview would remain confidential.

The Crown has 30 days to decide whether to appeal Bourque's decision. Jean-Pascal Boucher, a spokesperson for the Crown prosecutor's office, said lawyers will study the decision to see whether there are any points in law that need to be appealed.

Magnotta is scheduled to be tried in Montreal in September on charges of first-degree murder, causing an indignity to a human body and producing and distributing obscene material.

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